Background

Summoning police, fire department, ambulance or other
emergency services in case of emergency is one of the fundamental and
most-valued functions of the telephone. As telephone functionality
moves from circuit-switched telephony to Internet telephony, its users
rightfully expect that this core functionality will continue to work at
least as well as is has for the older technology. New devices and
services are being made available which could be used to make a request
for help which are not traditional telephones, and users are
increasingly expecting them to be used to place emergency calls.
However, many of the technical advantages of Internet multimedia
require re-thinking of the traditional emergency calling architecture.
This challenge also offers an opportunity to improve the operation of
emergency calling technology, while potentially lowering its cost and
complexity.

Existing emergency services rely exclusively on voice
and conventional text telephony (known as TTY in the United States)
media streams. However, more choices of media offer additional ways to
communicate and evaluate the situation as well as to assist callers and
call takers to handle emergency calls. For example, instant messaging,
wideband speech codecs and video could improve the ability to
communicate and evaluate the situation and to provide appropriate
instruction prior to arrival of emergency crews. Future emergency
services will allow the creation of sessions of any media type,
negotiated between the caller and PSAP using existing SIP protocol
mechanisms.

Motivation

Today many standardization activities take place with
regard to various parts of the emergency service architecture. They
are, however, not as coordinated as they could be. There is the danger
that uncoordinated activities lead to solutions that either do not work
in some circumstances or to solutions that lead to duplicatework due
to lack of knowledge of work done by other SDOs.

Three SDO emergency services workshops have been held
already and a number of other smaller coordination activities took
place. These workshops took place in the US (New
York,
Washington DC, and Brussels).

Scope
& Agenda

This workshop is restricted in scope to citizen-to-authority
communication and authority-to-citizen
(early warning)
emergency services.

The high-level agenda is the following:

Day 1:

Integration demonstration

Discussion of the overall operational characteristics
of the system from an operator and PSAP POV

This is an information sharing event. New insights and
new contacts from other SDOs will help the participants to influence
work in their organization.

The 4th emergency services workshop goals are more specific.

As the various SDO
architectures and resultant proposals arebecoming
mature, operational entities are evaluating the administration of the
next generation emergency services networks. One area this workshop
will focus is on the operational aspect of building/maintaining these
new architectures. We will also examine various use cases from an
architectural viewpoint, looking for areas that have not been addressed
by the current work in the various SDOs. Included will be a status
update of the work within the SDOs represented, such that any inter-SDO
dependencies that may be in jeopardy can be identified.

Meeting
Date

22, 23, and 24 April 2008

(8:30am-6:00pm, every day)

Hotels
and Meeting Location

The meeting will take place at the following
location:

725 W Peachtree St
30308 Atlanta
USA

The meeting is hosted by AT&T.

Peachtree
warning: Peachtree St and W Peachtree St
are NOT the same street. They run parallel, a block or two apart. Over
50
streets in Atlanta
have “Peachtree” in their name. Make sure the
street name matches precisely.

There are 4 hotels nearby,
within easy walking distance. Many
other hotels are available that have easy MARTA access, such as Wyndam
Hotel
Midtown Atlanta, Four Seasons Atlanta, Marriot Atlanta Downtown, and
others. I
suggest getting a hotel on the North-South MARTA line, and not north of
Lindbergh station. At Peachtree Center Station (2 stations south of North Avenue)
are
the Hilton Atlanta and Marriot Marquis Atlanta.

3. THE GEORGIAN TERRACE [This
is 2nd closest, next door to
Hotel Indigo, and is popular because most rooms are large with Southern
charm. AT&T
rate $105]659
Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta,
GA(800)
651-2316 or 404-897-1991

This map has hotels indicated
as black circles 1, 2, and 3. The red square
"MT2" is where
we’re meeting, and the North Avenue MARTA station
is the long blue
rectangle labeled “N3”. Our meeting place, 725
W Peachtree St
(Midtown 2), is just north of the MARTA station, on the other side of 3rd St.The main entrance is on Cypress St.

Guide to
Atlanta

Getting around

MARTA is Atlanta’s
public transportation system. I ride it
every workday, and can recommend it as the best way to get around the
city (it
doesn’t run from 1am to 5am). Here is the link to its
website: http://www.itsmarta.com/.
If you intend to
do sightseeing, you may want to print out a Rail Map from this site.
Single
trips are $1.75/ride + $0.50 for the re-chargeable card (one time
purchase,
good for 90 days). You can buy a 7-day pass for $13. The 7 days start
at first
use. Trip fare covers both the rail and bus system. If you arrive at
the
airport during “normal” hours, there are usually
many MARTA employees ready and
willing to help you and answer your questions. The fare machines take
credit
cards. I’ve heard that the 7 day passes can only be bought
from the machines
and not at the fare windows.

It's a direct ride from the
airport to the North Avenue (N3)
MARTA station. All trains from the airport go to North Avenue
(and all southbound trains
go to the airport). Trains run every 5 to 10 minutes, depending on time
of day.
It takes about 20 minutes from the airport to North Avenue.
The station is in the
basement of the AT&TCenter.
Exit to the north
(follow signs to “AT&TCenter”),
unless you're
going to the Renaissance Hotel. That's to the south. [Note: We
aren’t meeting
at the AT&TCenter
– we’re meeting across the street
at the AT&T Midtown 2 building at 725 W Peachtree St.,
with main entrance on Cypress St.]

Taxi between the airport and
Midtown (where we’re meeting)
is a flat $32 + $2 for each additional person. This is a published,
negotiated
rate, so don’t let them rip you off. Some people tell me that
walking from
MARTA to a hotel at midnight is an uneasy experience (meeting homeless
beggars
on a deserted street at night), so please consider this when planning
your
local transportation.

If
you insist on renting or driving a car, you can pay
to do daytime parking in the AT&T/BellSouth parking lot on the
northwest
corner of W
Peachtree St
and 4th
St
(enter from W Peachtree St).
There’s no free parking available.

Dining

Buckhead (from the MARTA
Buckhead station, or by taxi) has
many restaurants and clubs and is the heart of nightlife in Atlanta.
For a list of restaurants in
Buckhead, categorized by either “country and
region” or by “type of food or
service”, go to http://www.buckhead.net/dining/.

Popular Tourist Destinations

In case you have some spare
time, here is some tourist info.

Most Atlanta
tourist destinations are accessible from MARTA. MARTA provides a list
of
popular destinations, and how to get there by MARTA, at http://www.itsmarta.com/explore/destinations.htm.
This site also has links to the websites of these destinations.

Top picks-

Georgia
Aquarium: This has become the number one tourist attraction in Atlanta.

World of
Coca-Cola

CNNCenter

KingCenter:
If you’re interested in the history of Martin Luther King and
his contributions to the civil rights movement.

Carter
Presidential Center

HighMuseum
of Art

Botanical
Gardens

Shopping

Take MARTA north to ArtsCenter
(any northbound train) and
shuttle to Atlantic Station; to Lenox station (on the NE line
– pick a
“Doraville” train) for Lenox Mall (regular mall) or
PhippsPlaza
(upscale mall); to Dunwoody station (on the N line – pick a
“North Springs
train) for Perimeter Mall; or south to Five Points station for the
Atlanta
Underground.

Workshop
Participation

This meeting is again planned as a public
workshop.
All participants have to register (regardless whether you give a
presentation or not). The workshop registration webpage can be found at https://edas.info/r6443. A 150 USD registration
fee
will be collected for food, drinks and social event.

In case you plan to give a presentation please help us to structure the discussions by sending us a
title,
abstract and duration of the presentation as soon as possible.